Members of the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, in the House of Representatives have explained why they
suspended their planned protest against President Muhammadu Buhari.
The party chieftains
said they decided to shelve the planned protest because of the respect they
have for the office of the president and speaker of the House of
Representatives, Yakubu Dogara.
The lawmakers had
earlier boasted of their plan to protest when the president will present the
2018 appropriation bill to a joint session of the National Assembly.
One of them, Toby
Okechukwu, said the lawmakers were not happy with the pace of implementation of
the 2017 budget.
He added that it was
not just the PDP lawmakers who planned the protest, but also members of the
ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
“It’s not a PDP thing
per say,” he said.
“In 2016 he brought N6
trillion, N7 trillion in 2017 and now he is bringing N8 trillion, we are not
interested in the trillion, we are not interested in the trillions but rather
what you can implement.
“If you don’t have
N8trn, why don’t you budget for what you have? It is just mere deception”, he
added.
A lawmaker from Lagos
State, Oghene Egoh, also said the lawmakers were aggrieved because of the slow
pace of implementation of the 2017 budget.
“2017 was not well
implemented, now you bring 2018. We thought about protesting against the
president but the speaker appealed to us that in the interest of the country,”
he said.
“That shows you PDP, we
are people who are willing to work for the betterment of the country,” he said.
“It was purely on
principle that we fight for implementation. The generality of the people suffer
it, that was the reason. But we thank God we dropped the idea and today the
budget has been laid.”
Comments
Post a Comment